We have ranked, rated and randomly deathmatched everything here. Every half-known director out there has a poll for his best movies and lists of ranked movies with some form of qualitative appreciation in the comments to boot. We have done ratings projects for movies and directors. Every year the Filmspots are awarded for a plethora of categories.
And yet, one species of filmmakers remains largely ignored by this sanctuary. I mean script writers.
Now, common wisdom will tell you that the true auteur behind a movie is the director. In fact, the very notion of auteur originally referred to writer-directors, which would make recognizing writers, once directors have been given all the attention that is granted them here, redundant. However, in truth, even the most acclaimed directors often do not write their own scripts, and I would posit that most people here recognize the creative and artistic importance of the contribution of writers to the filmmaking process.
What am I proposing ? I have no idea. I thought about something like Writers' polls in the way we do Directors' but that sounds quite complicated. Should we count writer-directors in such a project ? What to do when scores of writers share credit ?
And yet, as soon as I hear the words « Aaron Sorkin script » or « written by Charlie Kauffman » I am immediately intrigued, much more than when I learn about the new movie directed by, say, Steven Soderbergh for example. Replace the names here by whatever ones work better for you, and I am sure you'll find writers that excite you more than many popular directors.
So what to do?